The Happy Return

Chapter XXIII

On that voyage the change in conditions after rounding the Horn was most dramatic. It seemed to Lady Barbara almost as if one day they were labouring along over grey seas before the south-westerly gales, cold and uncomfortable, with waves running as high as the yard arms, and the next they were enjoying blue skies and gentle breezes from the south-east. They had in fact been fortunate, for the last thundering gale from the south-west had carried them well into the region of the southerly trades. They were leaving the Antipodean autumn behind them, and the northern spring was coming down in the track of the sun to meet them. The sea was blue again, as blue as any blue well could be, in its usual marvellous contrast with the white foam. There were flying-fish furrowing the enamelled surface. In a flash the privations and discomforts of the Horn were forgotten.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world that as night fell Lady Barbara should find herself seated as ever by the taffrail, and just as natural that Hornblower should loom up in the half light beside her and should accept her unvaryingly polite invitation to a seat beside her. It was perfectly natural that the officers should accept this state of affairs as one which had long existed, and that the officer of the watch should confine his walk to the forward part of the quarterdeck. At eight bells when Gerard came up to relieve Rayner the latter with a jerk of his thumb and a cock of his head called the former’s attention to the little dark group by the taffrail. Gerard grinned, his white teeth in his swarthy face gleaming in the starlight.

He had made his trial of the lady’s virtue in the long ago, before the captain had noticed her existence. He did not think that Hornblower would succeed where he had failed, and in any case Gerard prided himself on having sufficient sense not to try to compete with his own captain. Gerard had conquests enough to think about during the silent night watches, and he was philosopher enough to wish his captain good luck while keeping his back turned squarely to them as they talked quietly, only just out of earshot of him.

Yet to Hornblower—and to Lady Barbara—things were not the same here in the Atlantic as they had been in the Pacific. Hornblower seemed to feel a tension he had not felt before. Perhaps the rounding of the Horn had forced it home upon him that even sailing ship voyages must end some time, that even the five thousand odd miles that lay between them and Portsmouth would not last for ever. In the Pacific, appropriately enough, he had found peace in Lady Barbara’s company. Here in the Atlantic he was conscious of uneasiness, as he might if the barometer were falling rapidly in a glassy calm in West Indian waters.

For some reason—perhaps merely because he had been thinking of England—the image of Maria had been much before his eyes of late; Maria, short and tubby, with a tendency to spots in her complexion, with the black silk parasol which she affected; or Maria in her flannel nightshirt and curl papers with a loving note sounding hoarsely in her voice; Maria arguing with a lodging-house keeper, and Maria on board the ship at Portsmouth, her poor opinion of common sailors evident in her expression. It was disloyal to think of Maria like that; rather should he think of her as she was that feverish night in the South sea lodgings, her eyes red with weeping, struggling bravely to keep her lips from trembling while little Horatio died of the smallpox in her arms and little Maria lay dead in the next room.

“Ha-h’m,” said Hornblower, harshly, and he stirred uneasily in his seat.

Lady Barbara looked at his face in the starlight. It bore that bleak, lonely expression which she had come to dread.

“Can you tell me what is the matter, Captain?” she asked gently.

Hornblower sat silent for some seconds before he shook his head. No, he could not tell her. For that matter he did not know himself; introspective though he was, he had not dared to admit to himself that he had been making comparisons between someone short and stout and someone tall and slender, between someone with apple cheeks and someone with a classic profile.

Hornblower slept badly that night, and his morning walk which followed was not devoted to the purpose for which it had originally been destined. He could not keep his mind at work upon the problems of stores and water, of how to keep the crew busy and out of mischief, of winds and courses, which he was accustomed to solve at this time so as to appear a man of decision the rest of the day. Part of the time he was too unhappy to think connectedly, and for the rest his mind was busy wrestling with suppositions so monstrous that they appalled him. He was tempted to make advances to Lady Barbara; that, at least, he could admit to himself. He wanted to do so badly. There was an ache in his breast, a most painful yearning as he thought of it.

What was monstrous about his thoughts was the suspicion that possibly Lady Barbara would not repulse him. It seemed inconceivable and yet possible, like something in a nightmare. He might even put his hot hand on her cool bosom—a thought which made him writhe in strange anguish. His longing to taste her sweetness was excruciating. He had been nearly a year cooped up in the Lydia now, and a year of unnatural living breeds strange fancies. Somewhere just over the gloomy horizon of Hornblower’s mind there lurked fancies stranger yet; dark phantoms of rape and murder.

Yet even while Hornblower thus toyed with madness his cursed analytical powers were at work upon other pros and cons. Whether he offended Lady Barbara, or whether he seduced her, he was playing with fire. The Wellesley family could blast him at their whim. They could snatch him from his command and leave him to rot for ever on half pay; even worse, they could find, somewhere in his actions of the past year, if their animosity were sufficient, grounds for a court martial, and a court martial under Wellesley pressure could strip him of his commission and leave him a pauper dependent on parish relief. That was the worst that could happen—save perhaps for a duel with a result fatal to himself—and the very best was not much better. Supposing, as was just conceivable, the Wellesleys could tolerate the seduction of their sister—supposing that, confronted with a fait accompli, they resolved to try to make the best of things. No, that was not conceivable at all. He would have to produce a divorce from Maria, and that would involve an act of parliament and the expenditure of five thousand pounds.

To meddle with Lady Barbara would mean risking utter ruin—professional, social, and financial. And he knew he could not trust himself where risks were concerned. When he had had the Lydia towed into range of the Natividad and had fought it out with her gun to gun he had run such appalling risks that to this day he felt a little chill down his spine on recalling them. Risk and danger lured him even while he knew he was a fool to expose himself to them, and he knew that no risk would deter him once he had embarked on a course of action. Even at this moment, thinking about it in cold blood, there was something dangerously fascinating in the thought of wiping the eye of the whole Wellesley family and then daring them to do their worst.

And then all these cold-blooded considerations were swept away to nothing again in a white hot wave of passion as he thought of her, slim and lovely, understanding and sweet. He was trembling with passion, the hot blood running under his skin, and muddled images streamed through his mind in a fantastic panorama. He stood by the rail staring unseeing over the blue sea with its patches of golden weed, conscious of nothing save the riot in his own body and mind. When his heart had at last slowed down to normal, and he turned to look round over the ship, everything was oddly sharp and clear. He could see the smallest details of the complicated splicing which one of the hands was engaged upon on the forecastle a hundred and twenty feet away. Immediately afterwards he was heartily glad that he had regained his self control, for Lady Barbara came on deck, smiling as she always did when the sun shone on her face on emerging from the deck cabin, and soon he was in conversation with her.

“I spent last night dreaming dreams,” said Lady Barbara.

“Indeed?” said Hornblower, awkwardly. He, too, had been dreaming.

“Yes,” said Lady Barbara. “I was dreaming mostly of eggs. Fried eggs, and buttered eggs. And slices of white bread spread thick with butter. And café au lait with plenty of cream. And cabbage—plain boiled cabbage. My dreams were not extravagant enough to run to a purée of spinach, but I almost attained to a dish of young carrots. And behold, this morning Hebe brings me my black coffee and my weevilly maize bread, and Polwheal sends in to ask me if I will be pleased to take beef or pork for my dinner. Today I think I start on the seventh brother of the pig whose chops I first tasted at Panama. I know his breed by now.”

Lady Barbara could still laugh and show her white teeth in her brown face, as she made this speech, and her laugh whisked away Hornblower’s passion for a space. He was in sympathy with her—months of ship’s fare set everyone literally dreaming of fresh food—but her fine naturalness acted upon Hornblower’s state of mind like an open window on a stuffy room. It was that talk about food which staved off the crisis for a few more days—golden days, during which the Lydia kept the south-east trades on her beam and reached steadily across the south Atlantic for St. Helena.

The wind did not fail her until the very evening when the lookout at the masthead, the setting of the sun in a golden glory having enabled him to gaze ahead once more, caught sight of the tip of the mountain top just as the light was fading from the sky, and his cry of “Land ho!” told Hornblower that once more he had made a perfect landfall. All day long the wind had been dying away, and with the setting of the sun it dwindled to nothing, tantalisingly, just when a few more hours of it would have carried the Lydia to the island. From the deck there was still no sign of land, and as Gerard pointed out to Lady Barbara, she would have to take its proximity on trust until the wind condescended to blow again. Her disappointment at this postponement of her promised buttered eggs was so appealing that Crystal hastened forward and stuck his open clasp-knife in the mainmast. That was a sure way of raising a wind, he said—and if by any mishap it should fail on this occasion he would set all the snip’s boys whistling in unison and chance the tempest such imprudence might summon from the deep.

It may have been the mere fact of this respite working on Hornblower’s subconscious mind which precipitated the crisis; for undoubtedly Hornblower had a lurking fear that the call at St. Helena might well bring about some undesired alteration in affairs on board the Lydia. On the other hand, the thing was bound to happen, and perhaps coincidence merely allotted that evening for it. It was coincidence that Hornblower should come into the main cabin in the half light at a moment when he thought Lady Barbara was on deck, and it was coincidence that his hand should brush against her bare arm as they stood cramped between the table and the locker and he apologised for his intrusion. She was in his arms then, and they kissed, and kissed again. She put one hand behind his shoulder and touched the back of his neck, and they were giddy with passion. Then a roll of the ship forced him to let her go, and she sank down upon the locker, and she smiled at him as she sat so that he came down on his knees beside her, his head on her breast, and she stroked his curls, and they kissed again as if they would never tire. She spoke to him with the endearments which her nurse had used to her when she was a child—she had never learned yet to use endearments.

“My dear,” she whispered. “My sweet. My poppet.”

It was hard to find words that would tell him of her love for him.

“Your hands are beautiful,” she said, spreading one of them on her own palm, and playing with the long slender fingers. “I have loved them ever since Panama.”

Hornblower had always thought his hands bony and ugly, and the left one bore the ingrained powder stain he had acquired at the boarding of the Castilla. He looked at her to see if she were teasing him, and when he saw that she was not he could only kiss her again—her lips were so ready for his kisses. It was like a miracle that she should want to be kissed. Passion carried them away once more.

Hebe’s entrance made them part; at least it made Hornblower spring up, to sit bolt upright and self-conscious, while Hebe grinned at them with sly eyes. To Hornblower it was a dreadful thing for a captain to be caught toying with a woman on board his ship actually in commission. It was contrary to the Articles of War—worse, it was undignified, subversive of discipline, dangerous. Lady Barbara remained quite unruffled.

“Go away, Hebe,” she said, calmly. “I shall not need you yet.” And she turned back to Hornblower, but the spell was broken. He had seen himself in a new light, grovelling furtively on a couch with a passenger. He was blushing hotly, angry with himself, and already wondering how much the officer of the watch and the man at the wheel had heard of their murmurings through the open skylight. “What are we to do?” he asked feebly.

“Do?” she replied. “We are lovers, and the world is ours. We do as we will.”

“But—,” he said, and again “but—”

He wanted to explain to her in half a dozen words the complications he could see hedging him in. There was a cold fit on him; he wanted to tell her of how he dreaded the ill-concealed amusement of Gerard, the utterly tactless tactfulness of Bush, and how the captain of a ship was not nearly as much his own master as she apparently thought, but it was hopeless. He could only stammer, and his hands flapped feebly, and his face was averted. He had forgotten all these practical details in those mad dreams of his. She put her hand on his chin and made him turn to her.

“Dear,” she asked. “What is troubling you? Tell me, dear.”

“I am a married man,” he said, taking the coward’s way out.

“I know that. Are you going to allow that to interfere with—us?”

“Besides—,” he said, and his hands flapped again in the hopeless effort to express all the doubts which consumed him. She condescended to sink her pride a little further.

“Hebe is safe,” she said, softly. “She worships me. Nor would she dare to be indiscreet.”

She saw the look in his face, and rose abruptly. Her blood and lineage were outraged at this. However veiled her offer had been, it had been refused. She was in a cold rage now.

“Please have the kindness, Captain,” she said, “to open that door for me.”

She swept out of the cabin with all the dignity of an earl’s daughter, and if she wept when in the privacy of her own cabin, Hornblower knew nothing of it. He was pacing the deck above, up and down, up and down, endlessly. This was the end of his fine dreams. This was how he showed himself a man to whom danger and risk only made a plan more attractive. He was a fine lady-killer, a devil of a buck. He cursed himself in his shame, he jeered at himself as a man who could face the wrath of the Wellesleys in imagination and who flinched from the amusement of Gerard in practice.

It all might have come right in the end. If the calm had persisted for two or three days, so that Lady Barbara could have forgotten her wrath and Hornblower his doubts, more might have happened. There might have been an echoing scandal in high life. But as it was, at midnight a little wind began to blow—perhaps it was Crystal’s clasp-knife which had summoned it—and Gerard came to him for orders. Again he could not flout public opinion. He could not face the thought of the suspicions which would arise and the secret questions which would be asked if he gave orders for the ship to be put about and to head away from St. Helena at a time when the wind held fair.